I know the competition is pretty intense in most gaming contests, so i was wondering if anyone had ever heard of java game contests for children, or under 18? My Google searches didn't show anything so i figured i would give this a shot. (by these contests i mean the ones where you submit games you have made just to clarify)

Organizations designed to "help kids make computer games" pop up every two or three months. People can "program" their own games with "no programming skills needed." I don't think participants or reporters catch on to the fact that the tools they use to make their games are actually (sandbox) games themselves and that there game is user generated content, not an original game. Kids (and technologically ignorant adults) are good targets for these money making schemes because they expect the process to be easy. Kids don't usually make games because they don't have the drive to put in the prerequisite effort. If there were shortcuts you could take to make games, adults would take them, too. There is no point in a contest for people that young. The barrier to entry for making games is so high that the number of participants would be tiny and the number of completed entries would be around 1 plus or minus one. On top of that, we do not teach young people enough math and we teach all people to think of computers as black boxes where magic happens in proprietary applications. It would be nice if there were not such barriers, but it is a fact for now.

There is no optimal age that helps a person make better games. Either someone is experienced enough to participate with others with similar experience levels in terms of months or years programming games or they do not have experience to finish a game. The playing field is level even if difficult to enter. In your case, you need to learn basic programming skills, fundamental math knowledge, and independent learning skills. If you think you cannot meet the minimum requirements for an open contest (just make a game that works and is actually a game) but that you could make a better game if your competition was younger, then you are kidding yourself. This is not the type of contest like chess or basketball, where your opponents success is a function of your own failure. The presence or absence of competition has no effect on the quality of your own games.

Organizations designed to "help kids make computer games" pop up every two or three months. People can "program" their own games with "no programming skills needed." I don't think participants or reporters catch on to the fact that the tools they use to make their games are actually (sandbox) games themselves and that there game is user generated content, not an original game. Kids (and technologically ignorant adults) are good targets for these money making schemes because they expect the process to be easy. Kids don't usually make games because they don't have the drive to put in the prerequisite effort. If there were shortcuts you could take to make games, adults would take them, too. There is no point in a contest for people that young. The barrier to entry for making games is so high that the number of participants would be tiny and the number of completed entries would be around 1 plus or minus one. On top of that, we do not teach young people enough math and we teach all people to think of computers as black boxes where magic happens in proprietary applications. It would be nice if there were not such barriers, but it is a fact for now.

There is no optimal age that helps a person make better games. Either someone is experienced enough to participate with others with similar experience levels in terms of months or years programming games or they do not have experience to finish a game. The playing field is level even if difficult to enter. In your case, you need to learn basic programming skills, fundamental math knowledge, and independent learning skills. If you think you cannot meet the minimum requirements for an open contest (just make a game that works and is actually a game) but that you could make a better game if your competition was younger, then you are kidding yourself. This is not the type of contest like chess or basketball, where your opponents success is a function of your own failure. The presence or absence of competition has no effect on the quality of your own games.

I think BUE is right, the hardest part of making the game is just, making the game. My first game took a lot of looking at other people's code, trial and error, and looking at different interactions. Looking back, I worked really hard for many weeks just learning how to get certain code parts together. Even though the code was a hacked mess, I just remember the feeling of getting the game working.

A small competition probably isn't going to change anything. I mean, you can start it, but the pressure of designing in such a small time constraint is probably not going to produce much in that limited people pool. There is still time to join in at the Java4K competition, however. During this time, you can learn a lot about coding and pick up things you didn't know before. (I even learned a lot more about Java just by doing this small competition.)

Experience is the key. Most people who start working on code, start when they are 18+. You guys have a leg up on all of them. Even saying you participated and produced a game on Java4k is something that many many developers will not be able to. The accomplishment comes from what you are able to do, not whether you have a fair shot of winning.

I hope that you guys would participate. Just because you are young doesn't mean your game isn't any less amazing.

I'd say Ludum Dare is a better competition than J4K for people learning to make games.It's more comfortable, and sticking with what you know and improving it gets you quite far.And the community around it is huge.

Java4k is more specialized. You struggle to optimize space use, which rarely usable on other things - I mean when you make full release games, space of code won't bother you but assets. In other way, LD lets you to be more creative by not restricting tool/language and playing with the themes.

I don't see why not, if you get enough under 18's to make it worthwhile. On the other hand it only takes a couple of years to get really good, so the standard won't be much easier. You could wait 6 months before holding it so ra4king can't enter of course :lol:

Why wouldn't you want ra4king to participate? Sure, he's all over the place, but I've rarely seen him spit out games of such superior quality that nobody on JGO can compare. I would think the more competition the better? Or, are you trying to avoid that by restricting age?

It's a nice idea, but somehow age seems so arbitrary to me (I'm 34 by the way, so I'd hate to feel almost 100% too old to participate ). People come from different backgrounds, go through different paths in life, and have wildly different talents to start with. I doubt that there is a clear correlation between age and skill in games development (would be interesting thing to research though).

Why wouldn't you want ra4king to participate? Sure, he's all over the place, but I've rarely seen him spit out games of such superior quality that nobody on JGO can compare. I would think the more competition the better? Or, are you trying to avoid that by restricting age?

The one-week-game sounds fun.

You doubt my skill?! You doubt my power?! You shall pay!!

But in all seriousness, I've never actually worked on more than 3-4 games...total. I am too busy with school and learning OpenGL

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